Traditionally, audio speakers and video systems are connected to their music and video sources by cables and wires. Those have worked well; but unfortunately, the need for multiple cables and plugs and wires made the connections messy at best. Later on, docking stations were developed and used for smart devices and the like, but such stations are being phased out due to rapid changing of device designs, country specific adapters, and evolving input-output configurations. For video, due to higher speed and increased band width requirements, no easy wireless option presently exists.
More recently, Bluetooth® speakers have been introduced. Using the Bluetooth technology, a mobile phone or other mobile device for playing music connects wirelessly with a Bluetooth speaker system.
Unfortunately, wireless connectivity can be tricky to use and maintain. Setup and initial configuration times are long. Depending on network signal strength and device access memory, sometimes the communication is repeatedly disrupted and must be restarted, going through the same long procedure all over again, causing great annoyance.
With Bluetooth, before the connection is successfully established, the devices need to be “paired” or linked together electronically. If other Bluetooth devices are present in the area, the process of device discovery, pairing, and authentication becomes time consuming. For security reasons, sometimes a system will need a password for authentication before a connection is allowed. If another device previously was most recently paired with the speaker, the information in the device memory may need to be erased, overwritten, or deactivated before the new device can be used; this involves an additional manual step, called “forget device”, to be undertaken. A person may just give up the effort and do something else. More specifically, to connect to the Bluetooth-enabled speaker, one needs simultaneously to manipulate the controls (mostly on the device) of both the speaker unit and the mobile device to enable use of the speakers with the source device. Which means he or she has to get up from the comfort of the sofa to go through the re-connect procedure.
Also, since the Bluetooth system has a low bandwidth, it cannot support video playing, even with a large amount of video data compression. Typical Bluetooth systems can handle data in the range of 1-3 Mbits/second; however even a simple, black and white, 24 frame video can re-quite in excess of 7 Mbits/second of bandwidth.